After her mother’s death Margaret Murray Robertson emigrated with her
family to Derby, Vt, in 1832. Four years later they moved to Sherbrooke,
Lower Canada, where James Robertson was the Congregational minister for
25 years, until his death in 1861. Three of Margaret brothers, Andrew*,
George R., and William Wilcox, became distinguished Montreal lawyers.
Another, Joseph Gibb, was a businessman and for many years provincial
treasurer. A sister, Mary, married the Presbyterian minister of
Glengarry, Ont., Daniel Gordon.

In 1847–48 Margaret attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South
Hadley, Mass., an institution renowned for its intellectual standards
and the religious basis of its curriculum. She then taught until 1865 at
Sherbrooke Academy, a girls’ school. She loved teaching, and in 1864,
when she was 41, her “essay on common school education” won a prize
offered by Alexander Tilloch Galt to teachers of the Eastern Townships;
the essay was published in the Sherbrooke Gazette and Eastern Townships
Advertiser on 14 and 21 Jan. 1865. In it she asserted that, beyond
imparting knowledge, “to develop and strengthen the mental powers, to
teach a child to observe, to think, to reason, must ever be the first
consideration in any system of education.” She went on to argue that
more important even than teaching this mental discipline was “moral
training,” for “knowledge unguided and unrestrained by high moral
principle, is a power for evil.” Because the moral standard was
God-given, moral training to be successful had to be religious and
“emphatically Christian,” but not sectarian. If government was to
achieve a higher standard of education outside the major cities and
towns, she maintained, it would have to raise the level of knowledge for
licensed teachers, ensure their moral fitness, provide them with
financial conditions that would safeguard stability and professionalism
(which meant an end to the system of “boarding round” common in rural
areas), restrict the curriculum to basic courses (including Scripture
history and Canadian and British history), and supply uniform
Canadian-produced textbooks as good as those which were then procured
from the United States and Britain.

Ironically, it was perhaps the success of this article that induced
Robertson to give up formal teaching for a career in writing; between
1865 and 1890 she published at least 14 novels. However, the themes of
her writing reflect so faithfully her principal preoccupation as a
teacher – the development of an informed, strong, and moral youth,
particularly among females – that she was clearly exercising her
profession of educator in another mode, one which would permit her to
reach a vastly greater number of young people. A concern with
Christianity is always in evidence. Her fictitious families read the
Bible together and attend church services regularly. The protagonists
are often members of a clergyman’s family or become converted to a true
or stronger faith. In the more didactic novels, lengthy sermon-like
speeches of spiritual encouragement or explanation are worked into the
conversations. The author’s Christianity is identifiably Protestant, but
her Protestantism is without Calvinist rigidity. Rather it is a
forgiving religion that emphasizes love and understanding and offers
comfort in times of trouble. In writing thus, Robertson was contributing
to a trend encouraged by evangelical publishers such as the Religious
Tract Society (London) and the American Sunday School Union
(Philadelphia), which published some of her novels. Eventually, however,
her works were published mostly by the secular houses of Hodder and
Stoughton (London) and Thomas Nelson (New York); these firms responded
to the growing popularity of a fiction that both blended the softer
dogmas of a loving Christianity with romantic plots and was acceptable
even to severe Christians, who until then had rejected the novel.

The principal agents of Robertson’s Christianity are female, girls and
women being the main protagonists of her novels; here is no Mosaic
patriarchy. Her plots are centred on the home and the family, in which
women provide love, strength, and unity. Indirectly Robertson treats the
family as a microcosm of society, suggesting that a society guided by
women would function on the basis of charity, cooperation, and mutual
respect, in contrast to the existing male-dominated world of authority,
exploitation, and materialism. Robertson is no revolutionary, however,
and is generally conventional in outlining the roles and duties of
female characters. Yet her women are lively rather than prissy,
intelligent rather than self-righteous, imaginative rather than prudish,
courageous rather than weak. In Shenac, the story of a Highland family
in Canada (Philadelphia, [1868]), Shenac rather than one of her brothers
becomes the leader when, on their father’s death, the children must run
the family farm until the eldest son returns. In By a way she knew not;
story of Allison Bain (New York, 1887), the heroine runs away from a
marriage of convenience and is eventually liberated by her husband’s
death, but only after discovering that she could not find happiness
until she had done her duty by him. Unmarried herself, Robertson
supported single women in her novels: in The two Miss Jean Dawsons (New
York, 1880), for example, Jean Dawson becomes a successful businesswoman
while retaining her feminine qualities.

For the most part Robertson clearly defines class roles. Scottish
dialect is broader among the lower classes and rarely evident in the
speech of ministers, teachers, or others of the educated class. Her
protagonists display little desire to alter their status, however much
their economic situation might change. Indeed, material gain as an
ambition is to be disdained in Robertson’s world, but honesty and hard
work invariably bring material and spiritual prosperity. Alcoholism
among the working class being a major concern of religious writers and,
later, of female activist groups, it constitutes a significant theme in
Robertson’s writings where it is treated implicitly as a disease, the
remedy for which lies in procedures practised today by Alcoholics
Anonymous.

Robertson’s work probably draws on her family experience for much of its
didactic message. Often the mother or father dies – sometimes both die –
and the children must take on the responsibilities of dead parents. They
mature through hard work, suffering, and responsibility, bolstered by
family love and solidarity and by religious faith. As well, all of
Robertson’s works are set in areas familiar to her: Aberdeenshire in
Scotland, New England, the Eastern Townships, Glengarry County, and
Montreal, where she was living by 1871. Shenac, set in the early Upper
Canadian Scottish settlement of Glengarry, portrays the harsh life of
the settlers and describes the seasonal farm activities, the closeness
of family life, the helpfulness of neighbours, and the importance of
religion, all of which characterized life in the region. In it, as in By
a way she knew not, Robertson uses local colour – customs, dialect, and
descriptive details – effectively. It has been suggested that she
influenced the writing of her nephew Charles William Gordon (Ralph
Connor), whose The man from Glengarry: a tale of the Ottawa (Toronto,
1901) and Glengarry school days: a story of early days in Glengarry
(Chicago, 1902) remain well known.

By drawing on her personal experiences Robertson gave her novels a
vividness and sense of reality that help to carry their didactic charge.
Like a good teacher, she is conscious that her lessons must be
attractive, and she effectually lightens her treatment of religion and
morals with the leaven of romance and sentiment. At the same time,
however, she shifted the sentimental romance of her time into a more
realistic, domestic mode. The romance is usually found with a childhood
friend or a recently arrived teacher or clergyman. The sentiment often
includes at least one deathbed scene. In the very successful Christie
Redfern’s troubles (London, 1866), Christie dies happy, having changed
from a bitter, complaining girl to a loving young woman, guided by the
devoted attention of an older sister. Shenac, By a way she knew not, and
The bairns; or Janet’s love and service (London, 1870) were among
Robertson’s most popular novels. Many of her works were clearly designed
for youthful readers, but these three appealed to a more mature audience
as well.

Meeting the demands of her time for didacticism and moralism while
entertaining her readers with memorable characters and vivid
descriptions of place, Robertson was widely read and frequently
reprinted in Britain, the United States, and Canada. Although her
brothers had distinguished careers as lawyers and politicians, she,
through her writings, was the more influential.

According to a contemporary, Robertson was a brilliant
conversationalist, intelligent and highly regarded by her acquaintances.
She was neither demonstrative nor emotional. Although, as a teacher, she
was devoted to her pupils, she never called a student by a pet name;
instead, she looked to the intellect. Correspondingly, her students
revered rather than loved her. Except when writing, she knitted
constantly – “not fancy knitting, but plain, useful stockings,” which
she gave to poor boys. In one winter she knitted 96 pairs. To the end
she retained a strong modesty about her novels despite their popularity,
and she lived so quietly in Montreal that her death and private funeral,
in February 1897, nearly passed unnoticed.

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